


Three left standing

by pleasebekidding



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: M/M, What is this and how did it happen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-06
Updated: 2014-10-06
Packaged: 2018-02-20 05:04:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2415956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pleasebekidding/pseuds/pleasebekidding
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU for season 6. Caroline, Stefan and Alaric are living in Baton Rouge and still looking for a way to bring Damon and Bonnie back. It’s been years, at this point.<br/>This drabble is technically part of a roleplay verse on tumblr (leading to an eventual polyamorous relationship) but it works as fic so I thought, why not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three left standing

It’s probably a year and a half before their truce becomes peace. Alaric gets it, he does, but it pisses him off, too. Stefan long-suffering. Stefan such a brave soldier, putting up with Alaric wearing his big brother’s daylight ring (as if he had a choice; without Bonnie, they can’t get another, and what is he supposed to do? Hide at home while Stefan and Caroline go out during the day? He’s trying to keep himself from going insane.

… maybe it’s because Elena was the one to go to the hospital and take the ring from Damon’s burnt, mangled hand in the morgue, and slip it onto Alaric’s finger. Another symbol of another person he’s lost.)

A year and a half, give or take, and maybe it’s because Alaric won’t let Stefan skate by on the bunny diet (“we don’t have time for one of your goddamn meltdowns, Stefan, drink from the fucking bag”), and maybe it’s because in the end he needs someone to get horribly drunk with and talk about Damon to (and Alaric had loved him, loved him) and maybe it’s because (unspoken) their shared life is about Caroline, now; but the truce does ease to a peace.

It’s a night like that that it all turns suddenly sideways.

Caroline is spending the weekend in Richmond. Meeting Liz there for mother-daughter haircuts and manicures and theatre and a nice dinner. They never get closer to Mystic Falls than that; the boundary might be growing, for all they know, their lives could be over in an instant; human, dead and human, all three of them. So Caroline meets Liz in Richmond, sometimes, and historically, Stefan and Alaric spend these days sitting in totally separate parts of the house they all share in Baton Rouge, silent until she comes home again to make them ‘them’.

But not this time.

Something is different. They’ve spent a little more time together than they usually do, lately, and when evening falls, they find each other in the kitchen.

“No booze,” Alaric says, staring at the pantry. “How did I let that happen.”

Stefan snickers at him. “C’mon, buddy. Let’s hit a bar.”

“One with no awful dance music?” Alaric sounds hopeful, though he’s not, not really.

“That blues bar on Lafayette. Guaranteed to be too busy to get us noticed, without being so busy we want to flip the switch and go on a blood bender. Sound like a plan?”

Stefan’s never really looked seventeen. Alaric wonders if it’s because he looks so haunted. Could be the abs.

“Sounds perfect,” he says, pushing the pantry door closed, and making a mental note to stock up on a few dozen bottles of their various preferences in the morning.

—

 

It’s a good bar. And the night is so hot, so humid, that people are flocking to places with much better air conditioning. Cinemas. Shopping malls. Their own homes. A pair of vampires aren’t bothered by the heat, and other than a little damp around their collars, they barely betray that they’ve noticed the temperature.

They miss Caroline, when she’s gone. She’s the glue.

They miss Damon all the time, but they never talk about that. It’s an unwritten rule. Which is why it’s a shock when Stefan meets Alaric’s eyes so evenly and asks, “were you in love with him?”

Alaric lets his eyes drift to the table between them, to his drink. Back to his eyes again. Hazel, like Alaric’s, though they never look as dark.

“Yeah,” he says, feeling suddenly defensive.

“That’s good. That’s… good.”

Not the answer Alaric was expecting, but whatever. “I haven’t given up,” he says, for the thousandth time in eighteen months. 

“That’s good too,” Stefan agrees, and they return to drinking silently, listening to the bar. They snack on the way home, watching each other like hawks. No one is allowed to die.

—

Alaric pours two generous tumblers of the bourbon he swiped from the bar, once they’re home, and passes one to Stefan. Stefan scrunches his nose; he prefers Scotch. Alaric wasn’t thinking. It doesn’t matter. They can’t taste much anyway. Well buzzed. Which is the only possible reason why Alaric suddenly has Stefan pinned to the counter, why he’s pulling Stefan’s shirt over his body, why they’re kissing hard enough to bruise each other’s mouths.

Stefan feels nothing like Damon, and that makes this alright. He’s taller, he’s bigger, every part of his body is outrageously well-defined. His mouth is harder than Damon’s. His affection is less raw, less needy. He’s looking to scratch an itch, and Alaric can appreciate that.

It’s what makes it alright. The only thing that makes it alright.

They stumble inelegantly to Stefan’s room, because it’s closest to the kitchen, clothes abandoned along the way in a trail which would tell anyone who saw it a very clear tale.

There’s no love in this act. There’s a burgeoning friendship, because for all the last few years were very shaky on both sides, Alaric understands now what it’s like to want to feel someone go dead in his arms and walk away from them. There’s a friendship because Stefan knows Damon was loved, now, and because they’re resigned to close quarters, and this is the only time this will ever happen. It’s the equivalent of shaking hands, that’s all, agreeing to leave the past in the past.

Which doesn’t mean it’s not good. 

It’s good. It’s very… good. And their bodies are as sticky as the night, when they part, collapsing on either side of the bed to ride out the wave. Breathing hard, though there is no need to. 

Alaric wants to say;  _don’t tell her_. But he suspects Stefan wants to say the same. So it seems unnecessary. Alaric cracks a tired smile, and heads back to his own room to sleep, taking a mental snapshot first of Stefan’s exquisite body, laid out on the bed, with the sheet draped over his hips, thick thatch of curly hair, darker than the hair on his head peeking over the top.

—

The second time it happens it’s under almost the same circumstances but Alaric has the oddest sense that this time, they were both actually planning it. How else can he explain that fact that he went out of his way a few weeks ago to make sure he has lube tucked away in a drawer, so they can rely on more than their mouths and their hands? Or the fact that they don’t even bother heading out for a drink, and instead work up a little head of courage right there on the couch with a couple of bottles of whiskey?

With a hand firmly planted between Stefan’s shoulder blades, holding him to the bed, and the other gripping his hip roughly, Alaric slakes his lust while Caroline has a girlie weekend in Chicago with Elena. While they drink cocktails on a rooftop somewhere, whistling into the wind, Alaric opens his throat around Stefan’s cock, laughing because Stefan’s voice goes at least an octave lower when he’s turned on, and it seems like a funny thing to know about someone he was once deeply uncomfortable with.

While Caroline and Elena talk quietly and awkwardly about the impossibility of things ever being the way they used to be - on opposite ends of a couch in a penthouse suite Caroline most certainly didn’t pay for - Stefan and Alaric drape artlessly over each other bodies.

What Caroline and Elena are doing when Stefan’s fingers tangle with Alaric’s, no one will ever know.

—

Caroline is fast asleep, and apparently feeling optimistic about something or other, and has gone to bed early. She almost never does this, but she says something about wanting to go to sleep before anything can ruin her buzz. Maybe close to three in the morning. (They’re still vampires, after all.) Alaric is stretched out on his bed, reading. He gave up on the genealogy of witches an hour ago, or more. He’s reading a paperback copy of an old whodunnit. These moments are strange. Is it a betrayal? To rest, sometimes, while Damon and Bonnie are over there somewhere?

 ** _If_**  they’re over there. Popular opinion states there’s no ‘over there’ they could be in.

The door opens, and Alaric looks up, with a question in his eyes, but Stefan just sprawls on the bed next to him. Hands behind his head. It does very interesting things to several crucial muscle groups, in no way concealed by the wifebeater singlet he’s barely wearing. Especially with an inch or so of stomach totally bared, above the lazy waistband of his faded Levi’s.

He looks good. Calmer than usual. Pink cheeks, well fed.

Alaric brushes his knuckles over Stefan’s chest in acknowledgement. It’s a surprisingly easy intimacy, and Stefan returns it by touching Alaric’s hand lightly.

“I think I’m in love with Caroline,” he says.

Alaric freezes. He reads the same sentence three times, and doesn’t actually register any of it.

“I wondered,” he says, but he won’t admit he’s feeling the same way, that the moments when Caroline laughs or drags them out dancing when they really don’t want to are the moments that keep him from flipping the switch on his humanity for good.

He’s not really expecting Stefan to stay, after that declaration.

—

Caroline is a rainbow, when she lets herself be happy for a while. Alaric and Stefan allow themselves to be dragged to a club one night, and while she’s dancing, they find a corner of the bar to prop up, and pretend it’s not the worst music in the history of rhythm that they’re being forced to listen to. But Jesus, it’s awful.

They watch as Caroline dances and flirts with a guy who in addition to being very very ugly (… this is a lie) must also be stupid, because he doesn’t seem to notice the murderous vampires shooting daggers at him from their eyes. 

“First joint kill?” Stefan says. A year ago, Alaric wouldn’t have found it funny. Now, he smirks readily, and seriously considers it.

“I’ll take the left side.” He’s dancing way too close. “Actually, fuck it, I’ll just kill him on my own. I’m faster than you.” He doesn’t really realize what he’s said until he feels Stefan’s answering chuckle.

“I’m sorry. She… gets under your skin.”

Stefan nods. “That she does. So do we kill him, or go home? You can fuck me into the wall, that should cheer you up.”

Alaric laughs. “So we’ve stopped pretending this isn’t happening?”

“Maybe. Between you and me.”

“Is this healthy?”

Stefan doesn’t have an answer, and anyway, they’re vampires, and it doesn’t matter much.

—

It’s different, this time, and Alaric can’t put a finger on why, exactly. They treat each other like toys, sometimes. Take what they need, without leaving too much behind. But this time…

They kiss aimlessly for an awfully long time, and Alaric doesn’t even think about Damon, the whole time. He focuses on the strange familiarity of Stefan’s body. The inimitable sensation of fangs sinking into his throat. This is new, but it feels right, somehow. Stefan drinks hard, but Alaric is strong, he can take it, and he can make him stop, when it’s time.

Alaric kisses all the way down Stefan’s chest, pausing to tease a nipple with his teeth, and soothe it with his tongue. He bites Stefan’s inner thigh, even as he works him open with two slick fingers, and flips him over before the wound has even healed, fucks him with a ruthless affection he wouldn’t have thought possible.

After, Stefan lies half-draped over Alaric’s side, and Alaric stares out the window.

“She’s gonna find out,” he says, with a strange disinterest. “She’ll smell us all over each other.”

Stefan curls his hand over Alaric’s hip, and says nothing.

It’s a fucked up situation, but it’s  _their_  fucked up situation, and he’s going with it.


End file.
